The Leaves Are Fading
by Diva-esque
Summary: Fakir debates whether or not he should try to continue the story when it is over.


Aishuu Offers:  
**The Leaves Are Fading**  
Not mine. "The Leaves Are Fading" ballet is described as a "tragic love story as told in a sequence of pas de deux."

* * *

Once upon a time...

But that's not quite right.

It happens every day. The traditional fairytale opening states it is a singular occurrence, but he knows better, the knight-turned-writer. It is a daily trial for him.

He wakes up in the morning, and has to fight with himself. He knows the feeling so well that it's as familiar to him as the scar on the back of his hand, or the taste of his morning cup of tea. On the days when its worst, he doesn't let himself touch his pen, knowing that this time, he may finally give in.

Sometimes he wishes they had taken his hands so the temptation didn't exist. "Do you ever wonder how powerful Drosselmeyer really was?" he asked Aotoa one day. Of the townspeople, Aotoa is the only one who seemed curiously immune from the forgetfulness that had come to the rest of the town.

Aotoa may not have been a main character, but perhaps the blood of Drosselmeyer protects him.

The musician adjusted his glasses thoughtfully, closing the book he had been perusing. "The power to create worlds through stories - many people have it. But it's the rare writer who's able to make them come alive." He studied his distant cousin thoughtfully. "He was the greatest, Fakir. Maybe the only reason you won was because you are alive and he is dead. In the end, that may have been the deciding difference."

It unsettled him. "I rewrote his ending," he said.

"Yes, but they say 'Dead men tell no tales.' That's true. A writer gains insight through their life experience, and without suffering and joy... well, death stops it all. There is nothing after death. Drosselmeyer tried to break that barrier, but even he failed." Aotoa seemed a bit disappointed.

He didn't much like Aotoa, but he was the only one he had to talk to, aside from her.

It's hard for him to be around her, on those bad days.

She's usually in the pond on the side on the house he bought, floating in contentment. He wonders how she can act like that, when the story used her so poorly. She was the one who returned the Mytho's heart at great cost, but the prince choose to rescue a princess who manipulative and abused him.

"Ahiru?" he will say to her, and she always turns towards him. But she never answers, because she lost her voice when she gave the prince his hope back. She is just a duck, and he is merely a broken knight who has promised to remain with her forever.

He stares into her blue eyes, remembering that there are more ways than just words to communicate. He, a dancer, should know that better than anyone. There's a softness in her expression when she looks at him, sometimes an irritation when she quacks, but it's when she dances that he can truly hear her.

She hasn't given up her dance.

It should look foolish, a duck doing ballet, but everyday at noon, he takes his lunch and some bread for her and goes to the dock to sit and watch. She flies out of the water and next to him, and he sits back, her audience of one.

The dance is odd and graceful as she uses the basics she learned from Neko-sensei to good effect, and the remembered skill of Princess Tutu. Above all, there is hope, there is joy, and there is love...

She is happy, she is trying to tell him. He knows this, but he is angry on her behalf, since she doesn't seem to have that in her.

Anger has always been a part of him.

On rare occasions, when the feelings inside him are too much, he will join her dance. He stretches carefully, and then spins into a manic whirl of movement, angry and unashamed of the fact. The contrast between them is memorizing.

Her dance is one of someone at peace; his is one of turmoil.

Usually he feels better after letting it out like that. The girls from school still want him as their partner, but he won't even consider it. He will be graduating soon, and has had offers from dance companies from across the nation.

One of them has already taken Mytho and Rue. Already stories are spreading about the beautiful pair who seem to dance on air, the pure white prince and his dark princess.

He knows he won't accept the offer from that company.

Sometimes he almost hates him, the glorious prince who chose the daughter of a raven over her. If he had chosen her, perhaps she would have remained as Princess Tutu, for the power of the prince knows no bounds. But he had loved Mytho for so long, and knows that he can never really hate him

She had said it herself. She was just a duck, called into a fairytale to assume a role no one else would take. Still, resentment for the prince who had once been his charge burns beneath his skin, and he knows that his heart is divided.

There is more than one way to be torn in two, he has discovered.

Still, the one he is angriest at is himself.

He had been the one to bring the story to an end. If he hadn't, she would still be able to speak, still be a girl, still be able to laugh and be her friends.

"The real you is a duck," he had told her, but he didn't know what it would be like, not to hear her answer.

"Let's go back to being our real selves," he had said that day.

But was pretending such a bad thing?

"Let's bring this story to a conclusion," he had encouraged, and she had agreed, finally relinquishing Mytho's heart.

Would he have done it, if he would have known what it truly meant for her?

Forever as a duck... but forever for a duck wasn't as long as forever for a human.

His hands itch to rewrite the end, to give Princess Tutu her prince, to allow her to dance the pas de deus with him. That is his torment, knowing he could change the past, simply by telling the tale again.

But no.

Mytho had been allowed to make his own choice, as had Ahiru and Rue. That was the story he had told, to defeat Drosselmeyer. That was her triumph, even as she vanished into the flash of light she had feared all along.

They had broken the bonds, and he wasn't going to take that away from them.

So instead, he writes new stories, and makes sure each story has a happy end, just in case life comes to it. The life she lives now contains more than enough sorrow for one lifetime.

Sometimes he wonders if Drosselmeyer hadn't created the greatest tragedy of all, and is out there, laughing at the foolish knight whose heart is torn in two, and the little duck who was once the heroine of the tale.

And here we should say the end, but this is not the end, because there never is one. There is merely a sense of closure, as a new story begins, with new characters, as old ones are left behind, wondering if they had defeated their fate after all.

END 


End file.
